Hey, just wondering what the minimum card I would need to upgrade to to be able to run Battlefield 3 and similar games at 2560x1600 resolution (30'' monitor) smoothly. I have an old Nvidia GTX 295 and it is starting to have trouble running Starcraft 2 on high details at this resolution. I live in Thailand where electronics are more expensive, so I don't want to be dropping $900 for a GTX 590. There is a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti for $253 and a Radeon HD 6950 for $344, 6580 for $219 and Inno3d GTx560 for about $238. Would any of these be fine enough? Thanks!

Though I am an Nvidia supporter through and through, I cannot help but recommend no less than an AMD 6950 in your current situation. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but at that resolution you will most likely see benefits from having the extra vRAM over most Nvidia cards on the market today (except for the GTX 680).

I would suggest you look for a 7870 2GB or a 570 2GB (I'm not sure if there are many 2GB 570's though). These would probably be your best choice at that resolutions on high. Other cards that are cheaper ,yet slightly less powerful though not by much, are the 560 Ti 448 and 7850(which is currently the best price/performance card on the market in my opinion) -- also look for the 2GB versions.

295 can only run DX9 you should see some amazing graphics improvements.

A word of warning though - the only card that can run BF3 at 2560x1600 at 60 avg fps (even at high only) is the 590 and the 680(if the 680 had 4 GB and more memory bus width it would be able to run ultra at 2560 great I estimate). If you play at medium you should see 60 avg fps even with a 7870 2GB though.
Could you give a budget, link a site and tell us when you are planning on buying the card?

http://www.thanni.co...sort=20a&page=4
This is the best site I have found for electronics here, mostly they are in shops. (~30:1 exchange rate to USD). GTX 580 is about $600 and 590 is about $830
There is a large import duty of about 30% + high shipping costs to order online, so its hard to find a better deal online given that it might cost $50 in shipping and maybe average 15% for customs (50% chance it slips through?). At higher end cards it would be worth importing, but I don't necessarily want to spend that much.

I have never seen a 7850 or 7870 but there was a 7970 for about $900 IIRc.

I have not overclocked my 295, I have never OC any graphics card before, and never needed to as it did not struggle to play any games I had, most dificult one was starcraft 2. It seemed to run fine until it just stopped working all together and crashing my computer, and now it is also running quite hot.

Thanks for the replies, I am checking out that guru page now and it seems like ultra settings are not quite worth it, surprising to me that the games can outperform even the top end graphics cards still. I will keep an eye out for the 7870 or 2 GB 570 (ti ? )
!

Well if you want the card now and you want to stay under 350$ then I suggest you get the 6950 2 GB. It will give you better performance at 2560 rez over a 560 Ti. The 570 runs at about 400$ but it will run 10-20% faster. Again, though, at ultra you won't be able to play it smoothly but at medium to high you will have over 40 fps easy. If you manage to find a 7870 or a 7850 anywhere in your country at a decent price let us know. I think those might give you some more fps for less $$.